


Smoke & Stones

by 94mercy



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Light Angst, M/M, Protective Siblings, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Smoking, listen this is just about mari trying to be a good sister
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-28
Packaged: 2018-11-20 05:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11329485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/94mercy/pseuds/94mercy
Summary: Mari is five years old and she is watching her little sister grow inside her mother’s stomach.Mari is eighteen years old and she is watching her little brother’s obsession decorate his room in more merchandise than any one person should own.Mari is twenty-four years old and she is watching her little brother leave his family behind to chase his dreams.Mari is thirty years old and she is watching her little brother fall in love.orsnapshots from the Katsuki siblings' lives wherein Mari attempts to be the best sister that's ever existed





	Smoke & Stones

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all! Dalyre translated this into [Chinese](http://dalyre.lofter.com/post/1d0ca8e8_107dd4a5) and posted it up on lofter! Check it out and cry with me about it ;A; (Honestly, thank you so much for the translation, it means the world to me!)
> 
> \---
> 
> This got away from me so bad it was just supposed to be like a 500 word ficlet and it turned into a monster of Mari feels. I love Mari. Please give Mari more screen time in season 2.
> 
> Hecka unbeta'd because I'm trash and I can hardly read through my own written vomit.

Mari is five years old and she is watching her little sister grow inside her mother’s stomach.

“You can’t know that it’s a girl, Mari,” her father insists whenever Mari brings it up, but she knows. She _knows_ it’s a girl getting bigger and bigger in there and she can’t wait to have a little sister to take care of for the rest of her life.

She’ll clean up after her sister and feed her sister and kiss her sister’s head when she’s crying and teach her all about makeup and monster trucks. They’ll be best friends and Mari’ll be the best big sister that’s ever existed _ever_.

* * *

Mari is ten years old and she is watching her little brother bend into an impossible shape during ballet class.

“It’s too _hard._ I can’t do it,” Yuuri moans after class has finished and he’s left with feet swollen bigger than they should be. Mari raps him hard over the head with his discarded shoe and ignores his scandalized cry.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she snaps and taps him again, lighter. “Just because something’s _hard_ doesn’t mean you stop doing it!”

Yuuri’s bottom lip is wobbling and his eyes are swimming and Mari turns her nose up at him. “You gotta be _tough_ , like me!” She slams a fist against her chest too hard but pretends it doesn’t hurt so Yuuri will think she’s big and tough and worthy of looking up to.

Mari follows him to his next lesson with a big, homemade sign proclaiming, “You can do it!” in the brightest colors she could find. Yuuri beams and doesn’t cry once.

* * *

Mari is fifteen years old and she is watching her little brother perform on the ice for the first time.

She remembers taking him to the rink on Minako’s suggestion two years prior and having to coax him onto the ice with promises of chocolate for dinner. It had been messy and wobbly and Mari had to rush the rink when an older kid had slammed in Yuuri like he owned the place. He obviously hadn’t been expecting a red-in-the-faced teenager to come charging at him and had darted off before she arrived. Yuuri had looked up at her with his big brown eyes and had burst into tears and Mari thought she might die.

He’d sputtered a million different versions of ‘thank you’, clinging to her until she guided him to the side, undid his skates, bundled him up in her wool coat, and carried him all the way home, bare-armed and shivering against the winter wind.

Now, he’s figured it out. He’s all easy curves and almost-complete-spins and Mari can barely see her sniffling brother behind the determination laid out on the ice.

Others skate haphazardly around him—it’s free skate, though Yuuri has been insisting that this is his _first performance_ when they decided to spend the afternoon at the rink—but Yuuri keeps his balance and his composure and his smile and Mari thinks she might die.

It seems a little unfair that he would get all of the grace and beauty and talent and she would be stuck being utterly normal. Not that normality is bad, she thinks, but it’s not otherworldly or beautiful or extraordinary.

Her parents are glowing and Yuuri is glowing and Mari feels like glowing too but she ruins her own mood and stalks outside to wait until the end of the session and try to find something about herself that makes her glow.

(She regrets leaving as soon as she steps out of the door because all she wants to do is keep glowing for Yuuri.)

She has her first smoke on the steps leading up to the skating rink with an older boy who looks at her like she’s made of stars and she thinks, “I am an extraordinary sister,” and she glows like the cherry of her cigarette.

* * *

Mari is eighteen years old and she is watching her little brother’s obsession decorate his room in more merchandise than any one person should own.

She has outgrown her teenage jealousy and is, instead, baffled by Yuuri’s dedication. Mari is creative, she’s found, and calm and easy to get along with and a million other wonderful things, but she is not dedicated in the way that Yuuri is.

Long-haired, blue-eyed clones stare down at her from every corner and that could be enough; she’s unashamed of the many posters hanging in her own room of her own idol groups after all and will not call herself a hypocrite just to make fun of Yuuri.

It’s not the posters that are the problem. It’s the calendars stacked up in the corner next to a higher stack of magazines. It’s the figurines poised carefully along that shelves next to immaculately arranged plushies. It’s the damn _body pillow_ that Yuuri’s tried to hide in a place that didn’t take Mari’s superhuman observational skills into account.

“This is too much, Yuuri,” she breathes first to the empty room and the pile of socks she’d come to deliver and then to the boy himself when she meets him at the rink to walk him home. His little arms are clutching Vicchan— _too much, Yuuri_ —and his eyes are big and round and staring at her like she’s sprouted a third arm.

“Too much?”

And how is she supposed to tell the kid to take down some of those posters or send back some of those figurines or maybe not buy body pillows or dogs just because they’re related to Viktor Nikiforov when he’s looking at her with that innocence? How can she get him to understand how dangerous an obsession is when it’s as pure as his?

Instead of pushing the matter, she shakes her head, digs in her bag, and pulls out a keychain with the Russian beauty’s face slapped all over it. “I saw an ad for it online,” she lies and makes a note to herself to delete the pages of incriminating history on her computer. “I hope you don’t already have it,” she lies again because she’s already made sure he doesn’t.

His eyes light up as he shuffles Vicchan around to take the keychain and she pretends not to feel guilty about enabling him. He’s still young, after all, he won’t understand what it feels like to be let down by an idol until he’s much older. Until then, she’ll support his dreaming and strengthen her fingers so she’ll be able to put his pieces back together more carefully than she’d rearranged her own.

* * *

Mari is twenty years old and she is watching her little brother have his first real anxiety attack.

(It’s not an unfamiliar situation but she wishes that he didn’t have to suffer like she does.)

He messed up on the ice, during competition, in front of _everyone_ and he cannot stop whimpering to himself about it, about how he’s useless and never going to surpass Viktor Nikiforov and how he should just give up.

Mari crouches beside him, places a hand on his shoulder to keep him grounded to their corner of a storage closet. She lets him cry the tears he needs to cry. She lets him say the things he needs to say. She doesn’t offer any words to the contrary, just gently reminds Yuuri that he needs to keep breathing.

“Your biggest enemy is yourself,” she finally says when the panic lulls. It’s some bullshit that her therapist told her over and over that she never quite bought, but she thinks it might be something that Yuuri needs to hear. “You’re the only antagonist in your story.” It sounds stupider when she says it. She wishes she could pluck the words from the air and store them in her cheeks until she could spit them back at her asshole therapist.

“Keep breathing,” she says after that to make up for her Zen nonsense and she takes his glasses to wipe clean while she breathes with him until he’s calm.

Neither of them mentions it to their parents. Neither of them wants their parents to worry about another kid.

* * *

Mari is twenty-four years old and she is watching her little brother leave his family behind to chase his dreams.

It is bitter-sweet as he tugs her into another hug outside of the airport. He sniffles and groans and is holding so tightly she thinks she might crumple beneath his strength. She is reminded abruptly that he is no longer six years old and probably _could_ crumple her if he really tried.

She teases him about being too much of a baby to move all the way to Detroit and he teases her about how much she’s going to miss him. She pretends that she doesn’t see the tears threatening to roll down his cheeks and he pretends that he doesn’t notice how she’s trembling.

They say their goodbyes.

They say their goodbyes (again).

“Are you worried about him moving so far away?” Minako is clearly trying to get someone else to admit to it so she won’t have to be the only one stressed while he’s gone.

Instead of a real answer, she says, “Think of all the skaters he’ll get to introduce us to after hitting it big. It’ll be a _buffet_.” Minako is easily distracted by that and Mari gets to fall mostly silent while she chatters on and on about the different skaters Yuuri will be in contact with.

Mari lights a new cigarette, tucks it between her lips, and watches between the clouds for the departing airplane. _No_ , she thinks to herself, finally deciding, _I’m not worried_.

Still, the smoke burns like a firework down her throat and settles, stone-heavy, in her stomach. She wonders if she should quit.

 

Yuuri calls when he lands and he calls when he gets to his dorm and he calls when he meets his roommate. He calls after his first day at the rink, then after his first week, then after his first month. He calls when he’s stressed out about college classes or how he’s not even close to getting his triple loop right or how he’s supposed to interact with other humans normally.

Mari calls when a particularly difficult guest comes through the onsen or when she’s heard some especially juicy gossip from around the neighborhood or when her favorite idol group puts out a new cd or when her boyfriend breaks up with her and how is she supposed to start over with this again?

She calls to try over and over again to get him to set her up with one of his international skating friends. He always ends the call in a huff of embarrassment and disbelief that she’s still asking.

They exchange pictures almost daily: Yuuri, of bruised knees and his rinkmates and his textbooks, Mari, of bleached hair and Vicchan and daily life for Yuuri to remember. I’m surviving, he says through his pictures and his texts and his calls. I’m glad, hers say back.

Mari can feel the stone shifting in her stomach until it feels almost light enough for her work back up her throat and spit onto the ground.

* * *

Mari is twenty-eight years old and she is watching her little brother fall apart.

It hadn’t been her idea to call Yuuri when Vicchan passed but it is her on the other side of the line, trying to find a way to tell him without breaking him too badly. After too long of a silence, she settles on the most forward explanation she can ( _I’m sorry, he’s gone,_ or, _I’m sorry he’s gone_ ) and waits.

“Oh,” he says and she can see the draw between his eyebrows.

“Okay,” he says and she can see the pull at the corner of his lips.

“I need to finish training,” he says and she can see him trying to build himself up for the rest of the day, one brick at a time, despite the clenching she can feel in his chest.

“Call me when you’re ready.” Yuuri doesn’t hang up, though, and neither does she. They sit on the line and Mari listens to broken sentences and ragged breaths. He’s working himself up into a panic now; Mari only cuts in to tell him to find a safe place. She waits until the noises from the rink fade and he informs her, between gasps, that he’s found an empty office to hole up in.

She lights a cigarette right there in the middle of her parents’ room and they glare at her but don’t tell her to stop. Yuuri must subconsciously notice a change because he’s breathing along with her, deep breath in, deep breath out, and the sobs settle into calmer sniffles.

“I’m good,” he says and disconnects the call as soon as Mari hums an affirmative.

 

It’s his first Grand Prix and she’s watching from the corner of her eye as she meanders from one customer to another, refilling drinks, jotting down orders. He’s a mess.

Over the years, she’s learned enough about the sport to realize when someone is royally fucking up. Yuuri is royally fucking up. Tonight’s even worse than his short program, and that in itself was a cringe-worthy mess. He can barely skate straight, he turns are sloppy; if an amateur like Mari can see that, there’s no hope for him against the judges.

Minako is complaining loudly at the screen with every mistake Yuuri makes. Mari briefly considers breaking a bottle over her head.

His routine is over and it doesn’t take years of sibling bonding to see his devastation.

 _Call mom_ , she texts because she knows him best. Their mother will be asleep by the time he checks his phone and Mari will be waiting up anyway, but she knows that Yuuri needs Hiroko, not Mari. She knows that he’ll freak out about the viewing party like he always does and knows that the sound of their mother’s voice, still proud in semi-sleep, will crumble whatever face he’s put up and knows that he’ll break down and knows that’s what he needs.

She waits until she hears her mom’s sleepy voice picking up the phone to text him again, just in case: _Love you, kiddo,_ and attaches her favorite photo of her favorite idol and his favorite photo of Viktor and hopes that it will be enough.

 

She finds him at Vicchan’s shrine. Minako had told her exactly when he’d be arriving and tried pressuring her into holding the other side of her sign at the airport, but Mari knows Yuuri well enough to give him space to breathe before she sidles in.

“How long are you staying anyway? You gonna help with the onsen?” And she sees between the fractures in his skin and breathes through her filter and wishes she’d been there to fit those pieces closer together.

She nudges as gently as she can but Yuuri is fragile and he teeters and cracks and the glue she’s supplied isn’t strong enough anymore. All she can do is suggest a soak and a clear mind, give her bottomless support to whatever he decides in a way that isn’t pressuring like the rest of the family. All she can do is hope that he finds something stronger to pull himself back together before he’s dust.

* * *

Mari is thirty years old and she is watching her little brother fall in love. Real love, not the idealized version of it that he’d thought he wanted all those years.

No, he _blooms_ under the blue of Russian eyes and the brush of Russian fingertips and Mari wonders idly if she should pluck him before Viktor lets him wilt.

But she is neither cruel nor naïve enough to believe that she can protect Yuuri from his idol and his heart any more than she could when they were younger. She knows that he will fall and she knows that he might get hurt and she knows that she can’t step in to save him like she used to when he was eight and finally learning how to ride a bike.

Still, she finds Viktor one night after the dinner rush when Yuuri’s already passed out after training and the onsen in quiet. She balances a cigarette in one corner of her mouth, mutters, “Follow me,” out of the other and Viktor is all wide-eyed confusion as he trails after her.

Mari leads him outside, around the building, down paths that her feet could recognize if they were detached from her body, until her bare toes are sinking into cool sand and Viktor is oohing and ahhing beside her. She stops just at the edge of the beach, stares out at the ocean while she lights her cigarette.

“I’m very protective of him.” She breathes the words out with smoke, then repeats them so they don’t dissipate the same way.

The words fall heavy between them and Viktor is silent, rolling what she’s said between his fingers the same way she’s been doing since he arrived. “I understand,” finally, without the usual Nikiforov vibrato.

And she believes him. She inhales her nicotine and his truths and exhales her smoke and promises and he nods as though he tastes them on the air the same way she does.

They stand in silence and dig their toes into the sand. Viktor bums a cigarette and tells Mari all the ways he loves her brother in the quiet space between inhales and exhales until the horizon starts to turn a hazy purple.

 

Mari is not disappointed when she finds gold circling her brother’s finger. Even before Chris points it out, she’s noticed, and Viktor’s noticed that she’s noticed and he’s red under her steady, even gaze. When he meets her eyes again after looking everywhere but at her, she gives him a nod and nothing else and he seems relieved.

She does not pretend that she fully trusts a man who would abandon everything at the drop of a hat, but she cannot deny how Viktor _blooms_ under the brown of Japanese eyes and the brush of Japanese fingertips and all she can do is hope that, if anything, they wilt together.

* * *

Mari is thirty-two years old and she is watching her little brother fulfill his dream.

He stands on the highest step of the podium between his fiancé and his rival with lights flashing around him. It’s overwhelming and beautiful.

She holds a poster she’d made for him when he was fourteen over her head and waves it back and forth until he sees it. _The Future Mr. Nikiforov_ stares down onto the ice and Mari can’t tell if Yuuri is more embarrassed by the fact that she held onto the poster or by Viktor’s squealing and clinging in front of thousands of people.

Maybe, she ponders, the red cheeks are a direct result of the gold medal finally hanging around his neck. Maybe, she ponders, he’s feeling the same type of pride that she is.

* * *

Mari is thirty-three years old and she is watching her little brother walk down the aisle.

It’s a beautiful and ostentatious wedding. Mari spoiled herself and bought new earrings for all ten piercings. Yuuri spoiled her and bought her a new stud for the belly button ring he never told their parents about.

Mari does not understand everything that happens during the wedding; there are cultural gaps here and there that puzzle her and drive her towards a slump of her back or a twitch in her fingers. It’s not _boring_ during the ceremony, just different. Viktor’s vows are flowery and _very Viktor_ and Yuuri can barely get through his without blushing and stammering.

(Viktor had better cherish that for the rest of his life.)

During the reception, Mari is able to breathe. She demands copies of the blackmail videos Phichit plays from their Detroit days and snorts along with Georgi’s stories about Viktor. She squeals and fans herself during Christophe’s dance, his “present” for the newlyweds. Her and Minako playfully plan which skater they’ll be taking back to their bedrooms tonight. She wipes an errant tear when Viktor and Yuuri share their first dance.

Everyone has already given their speeches and toasts but she is Mari and Mari does not play by the same rules as Everyone. She waits until Yuuri’s cheeks are rosy from alcohol and crowds him and Viktor, raising her glass to them when no one else is paying attention.

“I wish you everything,” she says and drops a kiss to her little brother’s forehead. Viktor’s looking a step past misty which means it’s time for her to find her way back to her circle of comfort before he drags her into something more emotional than she’s prepared for. Yuuri understands. He tips his glass back to her.

 

It is late and Mari cannot help the sting of fifteen-year-old jealousy underneath her overwhelming pride and joy and so she drinks another glass of champagne to ignore it. She pretends not to think about how Yuuri has fought for and earned everything that he’s ever wanted while she’s sat at the onsen with her parents and watched him.

It’s too easy to let herself be sour and yearn for a boy who looks at her like she’s made of stars; instead, she throws her arms around her brother and chants how proud she is of him and chants it more, louder, when he turns red and sputters and tries to take her attention elsewhere.

Elsewhere happens to be Yurio, who still gets grumpy when she calls him that but allows her to drape over his shoulders and flirt more than is strictly necessary. “Should I clean out the storage room for you?” she asks between more champagne and more flirtation and she doesn’t miss the semi-desperate look Yurio shoots across the table to Otabek Altin.

“I’ll have Yuuri finish it up,” she muses and allows herself another strong eyeful of the boy who still resembles her Takao and removes herself from the situation.

The air outside is silent and smells like the sea and comfort. Mari fingers along the soft pack in her pocket, decides against it. It’s too nice of a night to mar with smoke and tar.

* * *

Mari is thirty-eight years old and she is watching her little brother cradle her little niece with puke on his shirt and tears in his eyes.

Viktor is exhausted, Yuuri is exhausted, Makkachin is exhausted. Their house smells like diapers and baby formula. Mari has never seen Yuuri happier.

“You’ll be godmother, right?” He’s staring at her with those big brown eyes and handing her the baby and Mari is wrapping her niece up in her arms like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

She doesn’t have her own husband and child to go home to or a wall for her gold medals or a list of accomplishments fifteen pages long or any extraordinary talents. She works at an onsen and probably will for the rest of her life.

It is hard to think poorly of these things when she is looking into the big blue eyes of her new niece. It is hard to be upset when she feels nothing but swelling pride and infinite joy for the man that her little brother has grown into. It is hard to feel envy when she has gained brothers and sisters and _family_ from those who love and support Yuuri as much as she does.

“I guess so,” she says and Yuuri pretends not to hear the crack in his extraordinary sister’s voice as she nuzzles her nose against his daughter’s cheek. She is glowing and so is he.

* * *

Mari is six years old and she is watching her little brother fall asleep in her arms.

“Careful,” her mother warns and Mari adjusts infinitesimally to allow little Yuuri to sit more comfortably against her chest.

Yuuri isn’t a girl like Mari had wanted and Mari can’t say she’s not a little disappointed, but from the second she saw Yuuri’s big brown eyes and tiny grasping hands and chubby cheeks, she was lost to him.

Holding him now after months of being too nervous to, Mari stares at those chubby cheeks and wiggles a finger between those tiny grasping hands and promises him silently that she will never let him down. She will do anything for her little brother; she’ll clean up after him and feed him and kiss his head when he’s crying and teach him all about makeup and monster trucks. They’ll be best friends and Mari’ll be the best big sister that’s ever existed _ever_.

**Author's Note:**

> Catch me on [tumblr](http://94mercy.tumblr.com) and talk to me about how great siblings can be.


End file.
